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250 Best Quotes About Kids For Universal Children's Day
If you're looking for quotes that'll warm your heart, you've come to the right place because we've rounded up 250 of the sweetest, most inspiring quotes about children and kids of all ages! Each one will remind you how amazing and special kids truly are—whether they're children of your own or not.
And even though there are thousands and thousands of quotes about kids out there, you'll especially love these quotes about children we gathered—perfect for Universal Children's Day, celebrated on Monday, November 20, 2023.
Some of these quotes are relatable, some are cute, some give advice and some are just plain funny. You may even recognize a few of these parent quotes and the people who said them.
Read on to see all 250 of these quotes about children, including son quotes and daughter quotes. If you find a quote about kids you love, share it with someone you think will feel the same way!
1. "A person's a person, no matter how small." – Dr. Seuss
2. "A child is an uncut diamond." – Austin O'Malley
3. "Always kiss your children goodnight—even if they're already asleep." – H. Jackson Brown, JR.
4. "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." – Albert Einstein
5. "Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors." – Khaled Hosseini
6. "Children must be taught how to think, not what to think." – Margaret Mead
7. "All little girls should be told they are pretty." – Marilyn Monroe
8. "Children really brighten up a household. They never turn the lights off." – Ralph Bus
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9. "Having one child makes you a parent; having two, you are a referee." – David Frost
10. "The real magic wand is the child's own mind." – Jose Ortega y Gasset
11. "There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." – Walt Streightiff
12. "At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses." – Ellen Key
13. "Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded." – Jess Lair
14. "Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children." – Princess Diana
15. "Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning." – Mr. Rogers
16. "The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child's heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world." – Michael Jackson
17. "Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." – John F. Kennedy
18. "Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world." – Lois Lowry
19. "Adults follow paths. Children explore." – Neil Gaiman
20. "The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence." – Denis Waitley
21. "Little boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older." – Peter Pan
22. "Children are mirrors, they reflect back to us all we say and do." – Pam Leo
23. "Give children toys that are
25. "Children re-invent your world for you." – Susan Sarandon
26. "In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television."– Erma Bombeck
27. "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." – Frederick Douglass
28. "The best way to make children good is to make them happy." – Oscar Wilde
29. "The soul is healed by being with children." – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
30. "Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." – Anne Frank
31. "Noble fathers have noble children." – Euripides
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32."You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes." – Wally Schirra
33. "There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other wings." – Goeth
34. "Children are our most valuable resource." – Herbert Hoover
35. "Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children." – Charles R. Swindoll
36. "If you want children to continue dreaming to the moon and beyond, then dream with them, both by sharing your fervent dreams, and by diving heart first into their own." – Vince Gowmon
37. "Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think." – Anne Frank
38. "To every child—I dream of a world where you can laugh, dance, sing, learn, live in peace and be happy." – Malala Yousafzai
39. "Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven." – Henry Ward Beecher
40. "Unless we can be like children, we can't be happy." – Marianne Williamson
41. "A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit." – Francois Rabelais
42. "Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child."– Ron Wild
43. "Children need models rather than critics." – Joseph Joubert
44. "Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself." – George Bernard Shaw
45. "We're all five-year-olds. We don't know how to do this thing called life. Are you faking it?" – Byron Katie
46. "Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history." – Ray Merritt
47. "We should all be inspired by children: they don't care about fear and mistakes." – Maxime Lagacé
48. "Only children believe they are capable of everything." – Paulo Coelho
49. "The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice." – Peggy O'Mara
50. "A child can ask a thousand questions that the wisest man cannot answer." – Jacob Abbott
51. "To raise a nature-bonded child is to raise a rebel, a dreamer, an innovator… someone who will walk their own verdant, winding path." – Nicolette Sowder
52. "The creator in you is the child set free." – Vince Gowmon
53. "The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith." – Billy Graham
54. "In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess." – N.K. Jemisin
55. "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." – Henry Ward Beecher
56. "Adults are just outdated children." – Dr. Seuss
57. "When you are really mature, you will again become childlike. Then your life will again become fun. You will enjoy it, every bit of it you will not be serious. A deep laughter will spread all over your life. It will be more like a dance and less like business." – Osho
58. "Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun." – Mignon McLaughlin
59. "Kids go where there is excitement, they stay where there is love." – Zig Ziglar
60. "While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." – Angela Schwindt
61. "Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them." – Lady Bird Johnson
62. "It's not about what you tell your children, but how you show them how to live life."– Jada Pinkett Smith
63. "We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." – Stacia Tauscher
64. "A little girl is sugar and spice and everything nice—especially when she's taking a nap." – Unknown
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65. "Children remind us to treasure the smallest of gifts, even in the most difficult of times." – Allen Klein
66. "What is a home without children? Quiet." – Henry Youngman
67. "Children are like wet cement whatever falls on them makes an impression." – Haim Ginott
68. "It is time for a return to childhood, to simplicity, to running and climbing and laughing in the sunshine, to experiencing happiness instead of being trained for a lifetime of pursuing happiness." – L. R. Knost
69. "Children take a stand for everything that is possible because they are still in touch with that place inside where everything is possible." – Vince Gowmon
70. "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is." – Yoda
71. "When children pretend, they're using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero." – Mr. Rogers
72. "Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility." – Kate Douglas Wiggin
73. "A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice, but as yet unstained." – Lyman Abbott
74. "Children make your life important." – Erma Bombeck
75. "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." – Carl Sandburg
76. "You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way." – Barbara Bush
77. "Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." – Robert Fulghum
78. "Encourage your child to have muddy, grassy or sandy feet by the end of each day, that's the childhood they deserve." – Penny Whitehouse
79. "The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age." – Aldous Huxley
80. "The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it."– David Hockney
81. "If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm." – Bruce Barton
82. "A child's appetite for new toys appeal to the desire for ownership and appropriation: the appeal of toys comes to lie not in their use but in their status as possessions." – Christopher Lasch
83. "Children of any age flourish with options. Art should be mandatory at all ages." – Donna Jo Massie
84. "Watch what you say and do because little eyes are watching you." – Reba McEntire
85. "No light shines brighter than the smile of a child." – Ian Semple
86. "Children make you want to start life over." – Muhammad Ali
87. "Our most important task as a nation is to make sure all our young people can achieve their dreams." – Barack Obama
88. "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."– Rabindranath Tagore
89. "All children have creative power." – Brenda Ueland
90. "There is a brilliant child locked inside every student." – Marva Collins
91. "Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."– Clementine Paddleford
92. "Teach your children they're unique. That way, they won't feel pressured to be like everybody else." – Cindy Cashman
93. "Sometimes the littlest things take up the most room in your heart." – Winnie the Pooh
94. "In childhood, time is kind. A moment is swallowed whole, by senses open and able." – Nicoletta Baumeister
95. "A baby is as pure as an angel and as fresh as a blooming flower." – Debasish Mridha.
96. "Like stars are to the sky, so are the children to our world. They deserve to shine!" – Chinonye J. Chidolue
97. "Children are the only brave philosophers." – Yevgeny Zamyatin
98. "Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!" – Charles Mingus
99."If we nurture the dreams of children, the world will be blessed. If we destroy them, the world is doomed!" – Wess Stafford
100. "Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity." – Kay Redfield Jamison
101. "Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play." – Michel de Montaigne
102. "We must teach our children to smell the earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall—to care." – John Cleal
103. "Every child has the capacity to be everything." – Doris Lessing
104. "Don't just teach your kids to read, teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything." – George Carlin
105. "Nothing matters more to a child than a place to call home." – Brenda Donald
106. "We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do." – Bringhman Young
107. "A child is a deep mystery." – Amelia E. Barr
108. "Nature is a tool to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves." – Stephen Moss
109. "Children are illuminated textbooks." – Amos Bronson Alcott
110. "Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion, but by play." – Plato
111. "A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities." – Henry Ward Beecher
112. "Children, no matter how gifted, can't see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime." – John Saul
113. "Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives." – Thomas Berry
114. "If a child is given love, he becomes loving." – Dr. Joyce Brothers
115. "Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed." – Maria Montessori
116. "Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted." – Garrison Keillor
117."Children are unripe and imperfect." – Aristotle
118. "Adults are obsolete children." – Dr. Seuss
119. "A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires." – Paulo Coelho
120. "The best thing to spend on your children is your time." – Louise Hart
121. "Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world—jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping and fort building. It's this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge." – David Sobel
122. "If we provide enough space and possibilities for moving freely, then the children will move as well as animals: skillfully, simply, securely, naturally." – Dr. Emmi Pikler
123. "Too much love never spoils children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence." – Anthony Witham
124. "To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter." – PT Barnum
125. "Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person." – Alice Munro
126. "Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don't expect trees to change, you love them as they are." – Isabel Allende
127. "Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision." – Denis Waitley
128. "Why try to explain miracle to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden." – Robery Brault
129. "Every child needs a parent, grandparent or friend who will say let's go it's time for an adventure." – Penny Whitehouse
130. "Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt." – Clarence Darrow
131. "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." – C.S. Lewis Quote
132. "Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them." – Bill Ayers
133. "Today our children are our reflection. Tomorrow they will be our shadows."– Maralee McKee
134. "If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don't make him afraid of the unknown." – Rajneesh
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135. "The only love that I really believe in is a mother's love for her children." – Karl Lagerfeld
136. "Children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them." – Teresa Belton
137. "The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil."– Walt Disney
138. " It is time to let children be children again." – L. R. Knost
139. "Children see magic because they look for it." – Christopher Moore
140. "How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can't lift their heads to gaze upon them?" – Josh Malerman
141. "The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults." – Peter De Vries
142. "A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement."– Rachel Carson
143. "A child is an uncut diamond. " – Austin O'Malley
144. "Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't soar free." – C.J. Milbrandt
145. "Every child needs a champion." – Hilary Clinton
146. "A daughter is a treasure and a cause of sleeplessness." – Ben Sirach
147. "Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn." – O. Fred Donaldson
148. "What we instill in our children will be the foundation upon which they build their future." – Steve Maracoli
149. "Children are living beings—more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves." – Rabindranath Tagore
150. "Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero." – Mr. Rogers
151. "Sons are the anchors of a mother's life." – Sophocles
152. "I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things." – Walt Disney
153. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." – George W. Bush
154. "Children need room to imagine and dream." – Unknown
155. "Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity." – John Muir
156. "Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words." – Betty Smith
157. "We can't control everything our kids do." – Roseanne Barr
158. "It's a wondrous thing how the wild calms the child." – Unknown
159. "We must all work to make this world worthy of its children." – Pablo Casals
160. "The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them." – Frank A. Clark
161. "When a child gives you a gift, even if it's a rock they just picked up, exude gratitude. It may be the only thing they have to give, and they have chosen to give it to you." – Dean Jackson
162. "Take children seriously... They can teach you so much." – Melissa Jean
163. "I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults." – Brené Brown
164. "All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land." – Deborah Harkness
165. "It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children." – J.M. Barrie
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166. "Women make us poets, children make us philosophers." – Malcolm de Chazal
167. "There is nothing that moves a loving father's soul quite like his child's cry." – Joni Eareckson Tada
168. "Each child's story is worthy of telling." – Anderson Cooper
169. "There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child." – Henry Ward Beecher
170. "You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had." – Marshall B. Rosenberg
171. "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." – Theodore Hesburgh
172. "The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers." – Gail Godwin
173. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."– Martin Luther King, JR.
174. "No one is ever satisfied where he is....Only the children know what they're looking for...." – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
175. "Play is the work of childhood." – Jean Piaget
176. "The world is a wide place where we stumble like children learning to walk. The world is a bright mosaic where we learn like children to see, where our little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and color and detail as they can." – Jay Woodman
177. "Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy." – Robert A. Heinlein
178. "People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know." – Nick Harkaway
179. "We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody's." – Kifah Shah
180. "Children are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for nature. Properly cultivated, these values can mature into ecological literacy, and eventually into sustainable patterns of living." – Zenobia Barlow
181. "One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world." – Malala Yousafzai
182. "Truly wonderful the mind of a child is." – Yoda
183. "If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too."– Marian Wright Edelman
184. "Seven things every child needs to hear: I love you, I'm proud of you, I'm sorry, I forgive you, I'm listening. This is your responsibility. You have what it takes to succeed." – Sherrie Campbel
185. "You're only as happy as your least happy child." – Joe Paterno
186. "Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case." – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
187. "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." – Pablo Picasso
188. "Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind." – C.S. Lewis
189. "All around you are spirits, child. They live in the earth, the water, the sky. If you listen, they will guide you." – Grandmother Willow
190. "Words are not enough to express the unconditional love that exists between a mother and a daughter." – Caitlin Houston
191. "I am like a child who blows up a bubble of soap. At first the bubble is very small, but it is already spherical. Then the child blows the bubble up very softly until he is afraid that it will burst." – Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
192. "It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless." – L.R. Knost
193. "While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." – Angela Schwindt
194. "Raising a daughter is like growing a flower. You give it your best. If you've done your job well, she blooms. And after that, she leaves." – Unknown
195. "What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?" – Rose Kennedy
196. "We carry our childhood with us." – Gary D. Schmidt
197. "Children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful." – Margaret Mead
198. "A daughter is a miracle that never ceases to be miraculous… full of beauty and forever beautiful, loving and caring and truly amazing." – Deanna Beisser
199. "Children are happy because they don't yet have a file in their minds called 'All the Things That Could Go Wrong.'" – Marianne Williamson
200. "Any kid will run any errand for you, if you ask at bedtime." – Red Skelton
201. "Painting like a child does not mean painting with child-like strokes and random scribbles of paints. But rather it's painting fearless... Approaching painting with a new light and courage... Learning endlessly without ceasing... Painting boldly." – Elisa Choi
202. "A first child is your own best foot forward." – Barbara Kingsolver
203."Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us." – John Updike
204. "There's nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children; it doesn't even have to matter what they're laughing about." – Criss Jami
205. "We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open." – Harry Edwards
206. "Perhaps it takes courage to raise children." – John Steinbeck
207. "Having children is like living in a frat house—nobody sleeps, everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up." – Ray Romano
208. "Children still need a childhood with dirt, mud, puddles, trees, sticks, and tadpoles." – Brooke Hampton
209. "Children are born innocent." – Nikki Sixx
210. "If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them and half as much money." – Abigail Van Buren
211. "Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be." – Rita Pierson
212. "Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back." – John Ruskin
213. "The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice." – Peggy O'Mara
214. "Never have more children than you have car windows." – Erma Bombeck
215. "It takes a village to raise a child." – African proverb
216. "Kids spell love T-I-M-E." – John Crudele
217. "Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see." – Douglas Adams
218. "Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls." – Erin Kenny
219."You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going." – P. J. O'Rourke
220. "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." – Henry Ward Beecher
221. "Don't just tell children about the world. Show them." – Penny Whitehouse
222. "Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits."– Anna Quindlen
223. "Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends." – V.C. Andrews
224. "A daughter is a rainbow—a curve of light through scattered mist that lifts the spirit with her prismatic presence." – Ellen Hopkins
225. "Keep your children wild—don't make them grow up too fast." – Brooke Hampton
226. "Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing." – Phyllis Diller
227. "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." – Berkeley Breathed
228. "Stories are like children. They grow in their own way." – Madeleine L'Engle
229. "In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own." – Margaret Wise Brown
230. "Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it." – Russell Baker
231. "Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial." – L.R. Knost
232. "Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words." – Charlotte Brontë
233. "A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark."– Chinese Proverb
234. "A child miseducated is a child lost." – John F. Kennedy
235. "There is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children." – Adam Gidwitz
236. "If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders." – Abigail Van Buren
237. "If we want our children to move mountains, we first have to let them get out of their chairs." – Nicolette Sowder
238. "To my children, I will say, 'Fill your skin with kindness and find solace in your solitude. It takes bravery to be kind. But to be brave you will need to know how to stand for something even if you are completely alone." – Nikita Gill
239. "I remind myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams." – Grant Morrison
240. "Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged." – Louisa May Alcott
241. "Children just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them." – Nancy E. Turner
242. "Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment." – John Bradshaw
243. "Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting." – Richard Paul Evans
244. "That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored." – Ivan Turgenev
245. "Our children are only as brilliant as we allow them to be." – Eric Micha'el Leventhal
246. "Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them." – Mitch Albom
247. "I hope our daughters are born with so much fire in their souls, they could put volcanoes and stars to shame." – Nikita Gill
248. "Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature."– Walt Disney
249. "A child's voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who have forgotten how to listen." – Albus Dumbledore
250. "A mother's love doesn't make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent." – Cheri Fuller
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Who Said What: Using Machine Learning To Correctly Attribute Quotes
Michel, Anna, Alice – The GuardianWhy do we care so much about quotes?
As we discussed in Talking sense: using machine learning to understand quotes, there are many good reasons for identifying quotes. Quotes enable direct transmission of information from a source, capturing precisely the intended sentiment and meaning. They are not only a vital piece of accurate reporting but can also bring a story to life. The information extracted from them can be used for fact checking and allow us to gain insights into public views. For instance, accurately attributed quotes can be used for tracking shifting opinions on the same subject over time, or to explore those opinions as a function of identity, e.G. Gender or race. Having a comprehensive set of quotes and their sources is thus a rich data asset that can be used to explore demographic and socioeconomic trends and shifts.
We had already used AI to help with accurate quote extraction from the Guardian's extensive archive, and thought it could help us again for the next step of accurate quote attribution. This time, we turned to students from UCL's Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science. As part of their PhD programme that involves working on industry projects, we asked these students to explore deep learning options that could help with quote attribution. In particular, they looked at machine learning tools to perform a method known as coreference resolution.
Tara, Alicja, Paul – UCLWhat is coreference resolution?
In everyday language, when we mention the same entity multiple times, we tend to use different expressions to refer to it. The task of coreference resolution is to group together all mentions in a piece of text which refer back to the same entity. We call the original entity the antecedent and subsequent mentions, anaphora. In the simple example below:
Sarah enjoys a nice cup of tea in the morning. She likes it with milk.
Sarah is the antecedent for the anaphoric mention 'She'. The antecedent or the mention or both can also be a group of words rather than a single one. So, in the example there is another group consisting of the phrase cup of tea and the word it as coreferring entities.
Why is coreference resolution so hard?
You might think grouping together mentions of the same entity is a trivial task in machine learning, however, there are many layers of complexity to this problem. The task requires linking ambiguous anaphora (e.G. "she" or "the former First Lady") to an unambiguous antecedent (e.G. "Michelle Obama") which may be many sentences, or even paragraphs, prior to the occurrence of the quote in question. Depending on the writing style, there may be many other entities interwoven into the text that don't refer to any mentions of interest. Together with the complication of mentions, potentially being several words long, makes this task even more difficult.
In addition, sentiment conveyed through language is highly sensitive to the choice of words we employ. For example, look how the antecedent of the word they shifts in the following sentences because of the change in verb following it:
The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they feared violence.
The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they advocated violence.
(These two subtly different sentences are actually part of the Winograd schema challenge, a recognized test of machine intelligence, which was proposed as an extension of the Turing Test, a test to show whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human being.)
The example shows us that grammar alone cannot be relied on to solve this task; comprehending the semantics is essential. This means that rules-based methods cannot (without prohibitive difficulty) be devised to perfectly address this task. This is what prompted us to look into using machine learning to tackle the problem of coreference resolution.
Artificial Intelligence to the rescue
A typical machine learning heuristic for coreference resolution would follow steps like these:
Extract a series of mentions which relate to real-world entities
For each mention, compute a set of features
Based on those features, find the most likely antecedent for each mention
The AI workhorse to carry out those steps is a language model. In essence, a language model is a probability distribution over a sequence of words. Many of you have probably come across OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is
In order to analyse language and make predictions, language models create and use word embeddings. Word embeddings are essentially mappings of words to points in a semantic space, where words with similar meaning are placed close together. For example, the location of the points corresponding to 'cat' and 'lion' would be closer together than the points corresponding to 'cat' and 'piano'.
Identical words with different meanings ([river] bank vs bank [financial institution], for example) are used in different contexts and will thus occupy different locations in the semantic space. This distinction is crucial in more sophisticated examples, such as the Winograd Schema. These embeddings are the features mentioned in the recipe above.
Language models use word embeddings to represent a set of text as numbers, which encapsulate contextual meaning. We can use this numeric representation to conduct analytical tasks; in our case, coreference resolution. We show the language model lots of labelled examples (see later) which, in conjunction with the word embeddings, train the model to identify coreferent mentions when it is shown text it hasn't seen before, based on the meaning of that text.
An example of word embedding space with semantic relationships between words Illustration: Samy Zafrany/www.Samyzaf.ComFor this task, we chose language models built by ExplosionAI as they fitted well with the Guardian's current data science pipeline. To use them, however, they needed to be properly trained, and to do that we needed the right data.
Training the model using labelled data
An AI model can be taught by presenting it with numerous labelled examples illustrating the task we would like it to complete. In our case, this involved first manually labelling over a hundred Guardian articles, drawing links between ambiguous mentions/anaphora and their antecedent.
Though this may not seem the most glamorous task, the performance of any model is bottlenecked by the quality of the data it is given, and hence the data-labelling stage is crucial to the value of the final product. Due to the complex nature of language and the resulting subjectivity of the labelling, there were many intricacies to this task which required a rule set to be devised to standardise the data across human annotators. So, a lot of time was spent with Anna, Michel and Alice on this stage of the project; and we were all thankful when it was complete!
An example of the annotation process – creating the coreference relationships Illustration: Michel Schammel/The GuardianAlthough tremendously information rich and time-consuming to produce, one hundred annotated articles was still insufficient to fully capture the variability of language that a chosen model would encounter. So, to maximise the utility of our small dataset, we chose three off-the-shelf language models, namely Coreferee, Spacy's coreference model and FastCoref that have already been trained on hundreds of thousands of generic examples. Then we 'fine-tuned' them to adapt to our specific requirements by using our annotated data.
This approach enabled us to produce models that achieved greater precision on the Guardian-specific data compared with using the models straight out of the box.
These models should allow matching of quotes with sources from Guardian articles on a highly automated basis with a greater precision than ever before. The next step is to run a large-scale test on the Guardian archive and to see what journalistic questions this approach can help us answer.
Bahrain International Trophy Preview Including Trainer Quotes
Adam Houghton reports back from Bahrain as the countdown continues to the fifth running of the $1-million Bahrain International Trophy on Friday.
If the first four runnings of the Bahrain International Trophy laid the foundations, then this is the year when all those connected to the race can surely take a moment to stand back and admire what they've built.
For the first time on Friday the Bahrain International Trophy will be run as a Group 2 and it arguably wouldn't be out of place as a top-level contest, such is the quality of the 14-strong field set to do battle for a prize fund now totalling $1 million following a significant cash injection.
Between them the 14 runners have won 73 races, everywhere from Ripon to Riyadh and from Windsor to Woodbine. Even the two locally-trained runners, Calif and Qaader, started their careers in Germany and Britain respectively before joining Fawzi Nass, the man tasked with trying to keep the international challengers at bay again this year.
Nass was successful in that mission when Simsir held on for a popular victory in 2020, but this looks a much deeper renewal and the raiding party features a whole host of star names who are proven at the top table, both human and equine.
Nations Pride the class act in the line-upNations Pride and trainer Charlie Appleby certainly come into that category. Appleby – who also saddles the recent Newmarket Group 3 winner Highland Avenue – is 0/5 with his runners in the Bahrain International Trophy to date, but Nations Pride is surely his best chance yet having added a third Group/Grade 1 win to his tally when landing the Canadian International at Woodbine last time.
With a Timeform master of rating of 124, Nations Pride is the clear form pick ahead of John and Thady Gosden's Israr (121), while his overall body of work is indicative of why Appleby is such a good trainer, especially when it comes to pinpointing suitable targets abroad for his horses.
Already a winner in five different countries (Britain, UAE, USA, Germany and Canada), the son of Teofilo is slowly putting together quite the international CV and he typically looked to be taking everything in his stride after a lap of the sun-baked Sakhir circuit on Wednesday morning.
Similar comments apply to defending champion Dubai Future, who is back in familiar surroundings having led home a one-two for trainer Saeed bin Suroor 12 months ago. This year he's joined by stable companion Real World, an absentee since a couple of lacklustre runs earlier in the year but very capable on his day, as he showed when finding only the outstanding Baaeed too good in a pair of Group 1 events in 2022.
The five-strong Godolphin challenge is completed by the André Fabre-trained three-year-old Birr Castle, a last-time-out Listed winner at Chantilly and previously beaten less than a length when finishing third behind none other than Ace Impact in the Prix Guillaume d'Ornano at Deauville in August.
Marhaba Ya Sanafi was no match for the awesome Arc winner when he finished third (beaten six lengths) in the Prix du Jockey Club at Chantilly back in June, but he was already a Classic winner having won the Poule d'Essai des Poulains at Longchamp the time before.
Trained by Andreas Schutz, Marhaba Ya Sanafi is just the second European Classic winner to run in the Bahrain International Trophy after Aidan O'Brien's Irish Derby winner Sovereign, who was a close-up third behind Simsir three years ago.
That was O'Brien's only previous runner in the race, but he's back for another shot this year with the rock-solid Champion Stakes fourth Point Lonsdale, while Aidan's son, Joseph, is set to break new ground with Above The Curve, who won last year's Prix Saint-Alary at Longchamp and has since hit the frame at the top level on another five occasions.
"As good as a European Group 1"That makes it three individual Group/Grade 1 winners – Nations Pride, Marhaba Ya Sanafi and Above The Curve – in the line-up for Friday's race, no mean feat in just its fifth year and crucial to its ambitions of claiming top-level status in the future.
It was also a source of mild frustration for a few of the trainers I had the opportunity to speak to at the track on Wednesday morning, stumbling across a rather more competitive race than they might have expected when they first hatched the idea to come to Bahrain.
Having spent so many years banging heads with the likes of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott on the National Hunt scene in Ireland, Noel Meade would have been hoping for an easier ride on his travels with the prolific six-year-old Layfayette, but it certainly hasn't turned out that way.
"It's jumped up to nearly Group 1 standard hasn't it?" Meade summed up. "I'm sure the whole idea is to build it up and fair play to them. They've put up the money and I hope they're successful with it. It's good for them, just not so good for me!"
Those comments about the strength of the race were echoed by Sporting Life ambassador Richard Fahey, who saddles Strensall Stakes winner Spirit Dancer as the trainer tries to go a few places better than when sending out Fev Rover to finish fourth behind Lord Glitters in 2021.
Fahey said: "I was just talking to the handicapper Phil Smith and he said the winner three or four years ago wouldn't have got into the race this year, so it just shows that if you put the money up you'll get the runners. It's a very strong field and for me it's as good as a European Group 1."
Astro King the fairytale story for KublersFahey is well familiar with what it takes to win Group 1 races in Europe, never mind the likes of Appleby, Bin Suroor, Fabre and [Aidan] O'Brien, four of the most successful trainers in the sport's history when it comes to winning at the top level.
It's for that reason that Daniel and Claire Kubler are so excited simply to be involved in Friday's race with Astro King, a horse they purchased out of Sir Michael Stoute's yard for just 36,000 guineas last October.
Never before has this husband-and-wife training partnership had a runner in a Group 1, so it's fair to say that a race of this kind of calibre is virgin territory for them. Whether Astro King can make the step up required to win it is the big question, but he's certainly well worth his place in the field having followed up his win at York's Ebor Festival with a career-best effort to defy top weight in the Cambridgeshire at Newmarket last time.
Summing up the journey they've enjoyed with Astro King, Claire said: "You always have hopes and dreams when you buy a racehorse, but if someone had told me this is where we'd end up I definitely wouldn't have believed them.
"It's been fantastic, for the owners and for us. The Bahrain Turf Club have spoilt us rotten from day one of the invite to now being out here. They're obviously very ambitious and they've developed the race itself really well over the last few years. Putting on a prize pot of $1 million is always going to draw in very good talent and we've got some hot contenders to compete against."
"But we want to be up amongst some of those names," Daniel continued. "As a trainer you're obviously competitive and you want to compete at the highest possible level, but the horse needs to have the ability. When you get a horse with the ability, you'd like to be able to show that you can do it and we're as good as anyone else out there. I think that [winning on Friday] would prove that in a lot of ways."
Of course, the Kublers are far from alone in using Friday's race as a shop window to show what they can do when they get the right materials. The same is also true of the Bahrain Turf Club itself and their ambition to improve the racing product in this country, just as they've done to make the 2023 edition of the Bahrain International Trophy easily the strongest yet.
The foundations are there. Now it's time to stand back and enjoy what promises to be a thrilling race.
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